Katabasis
by Fialleril
Summary: One shots set in the same universe as Anabasis, but prior to that story. New: How Barriss went from treating an unconscious Vader and struggling with her desire to kill him to the conflicted, almost-friendship she has with Anakin in Anabasis.
1. Poetry

**Note on the series title: **Katabasis is ancient Greek for "going down," often in the sense of going down to the underworld.  
**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine. But Riveth Giro is.  
**Summary:** Riveth Giro causes a stir in prison, loses his tongue, and finds his voice.

* * *

.3 years before Anabasis.

**Poetry**

_Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance._

- Nadia Boulanger

* * *

Riveth Giro remembered with excruciating clarity the last words he had ever spoken.

"What are the chances of getting some bread with this?" he'd asked the stormtrooper who brought him his meager day's rations. The trooper had simply exited without a word, the door of Riveth's cell swishing shut and locking behind him. "Not good, I guess," Riveth muttered to the darkness.

When they came to collect him for the torture later, he remained stubbornly silent, just as he always did. Although he was known in the camp for inciting the other prisoners, he was not about to tell his torturers anything. He would not give them the satisfaction.

It was only after they had strapped him to the table and clamped his mouth open so that he could not move his lips to form the words that he realized perhaps he should have said something after all. If only so that he could know that his last words had been something meaningful.

"You've been talking too much, poet," they said. "Causing trouble. Got to put a stop to that." And they laughed at him, lying there on the table, slow trickles of saliva running down from the corners of his mouth where the clamps sat against his gums. He wished he could say something in reply, something to match the terrible meaning of the moment, but he couldn't.

The pain was excruciating. He blacked out long before they had succeeded in fully removing his tongue, and he woke up—he knew not how much later—back in his own cell, with a mouthful of blood and the sudden discovery that it was very, very difficult to swallow without a tongue.

It took him several weeks to heal fully. At first, he could barely swallow, and in the first week he lost nearly fifty pounds. At the end of that week, they put tubes through the veins in his arms, passing the nutrients directly to his system. He supposed that meant that they didn't want him dead. He could guess why.

They should have killed him in the beginning, but they hadn't, and his defiance had made him an icon in the camp. If they killed him now, he would win.

By the third week, he had learned to swallow solid food again. There was a trick to it, a certain movement of the jaws accompanied by a tossing of the head. He was certain that he looked quite ridiculous.

He was haunted by the last words he had ever spoken. He was haunted by how mundane they were, how meaningless. His last words ought to have been some grand poetic defiance, some last desperate testament to the liberty of the soul. Instead they had been the pitiful everyday words of a prisoner spoken to the empty air.

He decided that he would not allow himself to be defined by their deeds. The words were screaming within him, desperate to be expressed. He had only to find the means.

A week after he began eating on his own again, he managed to enter the mess unnoticed and slip one of the blunt kitchen knives into his pocket. He smuggled it back to his cell and waited until he was certain that the guards were at the far ends of the cell block, and then he began.

It took some time. He had to take breaks because it hurt too much, and also there was the bleeding to be staunched. But he had resolved that, though they might take his tongue, they could never keep him from speaking.

In the end, he finished it. The word "freedom" blazed in painful red letters across his chest, and they could never take it from him. He had made the cuts deep enough to be sure that they would scar. It had hurt, to be sure. But then, true freedom always did.

They had put him in solitary after that, but the damage was done. The other prisoners heard of his defiance, and it spread like the whisper of sparks in a bone-dry forest. He knew that one day soon the sparks would catch and the conflagration would be unstoppable.

As he was being hauled away to the windowless hole that was to be his home for the next three months, Palo had defied their captors long enough to ask him why he'd done it.

He wanted to tell Palo that freedom was a state of mind. That it was something they could only take from you if you let them. But he couldn't speak any more. He would never speak again. That, at least, they had taken from him.

He pointed to the word carved into his chest, the only answer he could give. And Palo said, "Yes. I understand."


	2. Grendel

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** With nowhere left to run, Siri Tachi confronts Darth Vader—and her past.

* * *

.3 years before Anabasis.

**Grendel**

_And all our yesterdays have lighted fools  
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!_

_- Macbeth_, V.v.19

* * *

She was fourteen years old the first time she truly understood what death was. She had been on a mission with her master and another Jedi team, and the negotiations had gone sour. The other master had died at her feet.

Ever since then, Siri Tachi had wondered about death. Most of all, she had wondered about her own. Would she die calmly, at peace with the Force in her old age? Or would she, like Master Ivoth, be confronted with the sudden finality of a stray blaster bolt she was not quite fast enough to block? Perhaps she would die defending a friend, or perhaps someone she had never met. She thought about it for a long time after that failed mission, and ultimately decided one thing: whenever, however she died, she knew that she did not want to die alone.

She smiled grimly to herself, breathing heavily as she leaned against the wall for support. She no longer had to wonder about how she would die.

She shifted her weight, taking some of the pressure from her twisted left ankle, and turned wearily about, searching her surroundings. She had come to a dead end, quite literally. Her right side leaned hard against the ancient wall of what must once have been some sort of factory, though by the look of it, it was long since abandoned. A piece of the wall crumbled into dust beneath her shoulder, almost as though in response to her thought. To her left, another wall rose only a few feet away. She thought it had been only a little past noon when she entered this maze of dilapidated buildings, but the walls were so close that they managed to block out all light.

She was in darkness, alone, and waiting for her death.

Siri closed her eyes momentarily, focusing on her breathing and seeking some form of calm in the Force. She had heard, somewhere, that before death, one's life will flash before one's eyes. As that didn't seem to be happening of its own accord, she decided to make it so.

She tried to remember good times, times with her friends: Obi-Wan, Garen, Bant. Her master. Master Qui-Gon. Pranks she had played and lessons she had learned in class. The many beautiful worlds she had visited on her missions.

Instead, she found herself remembering two very different things.

The first was an old ghost story, a tale that the Temple children had told each other perhaps since the beginning of the Order. It had terrified her as a child, though now she could not quite remember the story itself. She only remembered that it had been a story about a Jedi who encountered Death.

There were a lot of variations on the story, but one thing was always the same. Death always, _always _had blue eyes.

She grimaced. The description was more than a little apt.

She tried to push that thought away, tried once again to think of her friends. She could barely remember what they had looked like. It had been five years since she had seen Garen, seven since she had seen Bant or Obi-Wan. She wondered what they looked like now. If they were still alive.

But the second memory was not of them. Even now, waiting for her Death, she could not think of them.

The second memory was of a woman.

She was no longer young, this woman, her face touched by the hard lines of struggle and a lifetime of poverty. She had perhaps been beautiful once, but that beauty had faded while she was still young, transfigured by her hard life into a weather-beaten countenance that spoke of suffering and character.

Although she struggled to remember the faces of her master and her friends, Siri remembered the woman clearly. It was as though a part of her had remained in that encounter with the woman, and she lived it anew every day.

Which was only another way of saying that it was all her fault.

She saw the woman before her now—the half-hidden sorrow in her eyes, the strength and desperation in her voice as she offered her young son into Siri's keeping. The boy was no more than six years old, but his grand solemn blue eyes saw more than they should. He stood just behind and to the side of his mother, clinging to her leg as though she were his anchor and blinking up at Siri with his too-wise eyes.

"Please," the woman said, the quiet strength in her eyes at odds with the desperation in her voice. "He's a very special boy. He deserves better than a slave's life. Please, take him with you."

In her memory, the moment was frozen, and she heard herself say, "I'm sorry. I didn't come here to free slaves," again and again and again, until the words became the litany of her failure.

And it was her failure, Siri knew. She had followed her mandate. In hindsight, it was the worst mistake she had ever made.

In her mind, the little boy's face faded away, his blue eyes melting into the blue eyes of Death, until she could no longer tell the difference between them.

And then he was standing before her. Not in her mind or in her memory, but in reality. Darth Vader stood there at the end of the alleyway, lightsaber clasped loosely in his right hand but not yet ignited, simply watching her.

"There's nowhere left to run, Jedi," he said, but he was not gloating. He was simply stating a fact.

"I know," she answered quietly. She was in no condition to fight. And even if she had been, she was uncertain whether she could bring herself to kill him. The little boy with his too-wise eyes was watching her sadly, silently accusing.

But Siri was a Jedi, and no matter what the mistakes and missed opportunities of her past, she would not die without a fight. And the ghosts of her past would ensure she did not die alone. She pushed herself off from the wall, hiding a grimace of pain as her swollen ankle received a portion of her weight, and ignited her lightsaber.

Vader grinned, but otherwise made no move. Apparently, he was waiting for her.

She took a tentative step forward, arranging herself in a defensive stance. Vader still did not move, but now he was positively smirking. She had the sudden terrible feeling that he was toying with her.

Siri Tachi was not about to allow herself to be toyed with. She lunged, aiming for the left side of his neck, ignoring the pain in her twisting ankle.

Vader sidestepped her stroke neatly, igniting his lightsaber as he moved and catching her blade, pushing it back towards her throat. She wasn't entirely certain how he'd done it—she'd barely seen him move.

They tracked one another about the meager space the alley afforded, Vader leaping easily over piles of debris, Siri doing so with less grace, wincing ever more painfully as she came down on her ankle. The duel was not going well for her, and it was made only worse by the fact that Vader's infuriating smirk had yet to disappear.

They both knew how it would end for her. She was already tiring, and it would not be much longer now. She found that she was already resigned to her fate. A part of her was afraid that she might even deserve it. Still, she decided, she could at least do something about that smirk.

"Wait, Anakin," she said, very clearly.

For a brief instant he faltered, but she missed her chance, distracted by the pain in her ankle. (Or maybe it was the fact that, even now, she could not bring herself to kill him. But that did not bear thinking on.) Something in his face froze, and for a moment Siri was struck with an ancient horror. The Jedi stood, mouth slightly agape, face to face with Death and his terrible blue eyes.

"How do you know that name?" he asked at last, his tone dark and utterly devoid of emotion.

"Your mother told me," she whispered with an almost reverent fear, dodging half-heartedly away from one of his attacks. "I…I knew her."

His face hardened and his eyes went dead. She caught the flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, but it was too fast, and she was uncertain what it was. And then, abruptly, he gave her a twisted, lilting grin.

Siri gave a little gasp and looked down. There was a glowing red blade buried in her stomach. It was strange how only after she saw it there did she realize how much it hurt. She looked up again and met Vader's cold blue eyes.

"Greet her for me, then," he hissed, giving the lightsaber a final twist and then spinning viciously away.

Siri's world dissolved into empty blackness. She had the vague sensation of falling, and then even that was gone.

Her last thought was spent in wondering what she could possibly say to Vader's mother.


	3. Gungan Venus

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** Palo Gvanish crafts his greatest masterpiece, and the piece that will ultimately lead to his arrest. The _Gungan Venus_.

* * *

.5 ½ years before Anabasis.

_**Gungan Venus**_

_It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures._

- Vincent Van Gogh

* * *

The canvas is prepared, stretched and pressed and primed, and it sits before him, white and lifeless and waiting to be breathed upon. For a time he simply watches it, silent, waiting for the canvas to speak. He tries not to think during this process, tries to keep himself open to the near-silent voice of the canvas and the paints. But he cannot empty his mind entirely, cannot cast out all thoughts, so he lets them wander as they will, guided by the blankness of the uncreated world stretched out before him.

Today, this canvas speaks of longing and beauty, desire and power, perfection of form, strength and grace. He dips a brush and lets it soak deep of the dark ochre pigment, pauses, listens, and then the brush comes down and moves across the canvas in strokes equal parts grace and power.

He begins with the ridges of the ears and builds the face from there: the slow smile, the eyes with their mingled confidence and innocence, the slight tilt of the head that speaks of challenge. The body flows from the face, painted in lines of poise and assurance, and the challenge is there, too. The swamp fills itself in around the figure, and the first phase of hurried expression is complete.

Now he listens more intently. He listens to each part of the body, to each pore of the canvas, applying light strokes where they are needed, heavier, bolder strokes where they are called for. The swamp becomes muted, a respectful backdrop for the beauty manifested within it. Limbs are smoothed, skin caressed with the light touch of the brush. Vibrant, living strokes accent the ridges on the ears and the shine in the eyes. The artist breathes upon the paint and the canvas and brings it to life.

A Gungan woman rises from the swamp, drops of water clinging to her skin. Her head turns slightly to regard the viewer intruding upon her private sanctuary, and her gaze holds both exuberance and challenge. It is the challenge of a beautiful being in love with life and unabashed by all that life holds, confident in the beauty and mystery of the world and of her own body.

The canvas is silent, and the artist's brush, too, draws away, respectful. The Gungan woman will speak for herself.

Palo Gvanish looks over his work and smiles. It is good.


	4. And Then You Burn

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine. But Penu Chadisk is.  
**Summary:** Ahsoka's first clear memory is of burning.

* * *

.7 ½ years before Anabasis.

**And Then You Burn**

_Breath at what price?  
The air is aflame._

- Sholeh Wolpé, "Fragments of a Journey"

* * *

Her first clear memory was of fire.

Later her caretakers told her that the Sith had turned the galaxy against them and tried to destroy them. They said that the Masters had gathered her and the other children and fled, and the great Temple on Coruscant had burned.

And burned and burned and burned.

But she was only five years old then, and she didn't know those things. All she knew was that the world was on fire, and the Masters were yelling for them to hurry, and the other younglings were crying, and she might have been crying too. She was too small, and she couldn't run fast enough. The Masters were scattering this way and that, yelling things she couldn't understand (because the world was burning and words didn't make sense anymore), and all she could see was a blur of legs and rushing bodies and the grey slither of smoke.

And then one of the Masters picked her up, slung her over a shoulder, and now she was running much much faster. She looked to the side, and there was a human boy slung over the Master's other shoulder. He looked about her age, and she thought he must be asleep, because his eyes were closed and he wasn't moving.

She could hear a lot of screaming in the corridors behind them, and there were strange sounds like the noises that blasters sometimes made on the holofilms the younglings weren't supposed to watch (but she'd watched some of them anyway). And the whole world was strange and red, except for the little grey smoke-snakes and the human boy's yellow hair.

But everything was all right now. She was with one of the Masters, and that meant she was safe. The Masters always knew what to do. She rested her head on the Master's shoulder and closed her eyes. She was trying not to think about the burning and the smoke-snakes that made it hard to breathe, because Master Yoda said that focus determined reality. So if she just thought about other things, the burning would go away.

Suddenly she felt a cool wind on her back, and she opened her eyes again slowly. It worked! The world was still burning in front of her, but it was moving further away now. They were outside! She tried to shift on the Master's shoulder, to see where they were going, but she couldn't move enough.

She closed her eyes to the screams and the burning again and waited for it to end. The Master knew what to do. The Masters always knew what to do. Everything would be all right. All of her friends would be all right, too, and tomorrow they would all go play in the fountain room and wash all the memories of fire away.

She didn't open her eyes again until she felt herself moving, being taken off the Master's shoulder and placed on the ground again. She was in a ship, and the human boy was lying on the floor next to her, but his eyes were open now. They were blue, like hers.

The Master was saying something, and she looked up, trying to understand the words through the memory of burning. It was Master Garen. That was good, because she liked Master Garen. He always told the best stories, and sometimes he brought them treats from off-world.

"Ahsoka," he was saying, "I need you to stay here. Do you understand? I have to go back now, to see if I can find anyone else, but I need you to stay here, and stay quiet and low. All right? Don't let anyone see you!"

He sounded upset, but Masters weren't supposed to be upset. They always knew what to do. So she must be still hearing things wrong, because of the fire. She looked up at Master Garen and nodded.

"Tell me," he said, and he still sounded afraid, but that couldn't be right.

"I'll stay here, Master," she whispered, her voice small. "I won't move, and I won't let anybody see me."

Master Garen smiled. "Good girl, Ahsoka," he said and patted her head. Then he was gone.

Ahsoka shrank back against the bulkhead of the ship, trying to make herself as small as possible. Master Yoda said that focus determined reality.

The boy hadn't moved, though. "Hey," she hissed at him, as quietly as she could. He looked back at her listlessly. "Master Garen said we had to hide." The boy coughed, then covered his mouth in horror, because Master Garen had said they weren't supposed to make a sound. They both stayed motionless for a long time, but when nothing happened, the boy crawled feebly over to the bulkhead and sat beside her, trying to be invisible. (Some of the older padawans said that Master Yoda could turn invisible when he wanted, but Ahsoka didn't know enough about the Force to do that yet. Maybe when this was all over she would ask Master Yoda to teach her.)

They sat still and quiet for a really long time, but nothing was happening. Inside the ship, they couldn't even hear the screams anymore. Ahsoka reached up and brushed at her lekku and tried not to cry. "Hey," she said in a voice so small that she could barely hear it herself. "I'm Ahsoka. What's your name?"

"Penu," the human boy whispered. Ahsoka nodded, but she couldn't think of anything else to say, so she went back to trying to be invisible.

Then there was a loud crash and the big door of the ship came open again, and Ahsoka and Penu shrank even further against the bulkhead. But it wasn't the white-face men. Seven or eight other younglings (but Ahsoka didn't know most of them) came crowding into the ship, silent and wide eyed. They were followed by two older padawans, a light-skinned human boy with strange two-colored hair and a Mirialan girl. Ahsoka thought the girl's name was Barriss. She'd always seemed nice.

The two padawans started ushering all the younglings towards the hold of the ship, telling them to strap in. They definitely sounded afraid, but Ahsoka thought maybe that was because they weren't Masters.

Barriss came up to her and tugged at her arm. "Come on, Ahsoka," she said, urgent and frightened. "We have to go!"

"No!" Ahsoka said, planting her feet. "What about Master Garen? He's coming too."

Barriss bit her lip and looked about helplessly. "We'll meet up with him later," she insisted. "Now come on. We have to go!"

But Ahsoka wouldn't move. She was waiting for Master Garen.

The boy with the strange hair came running back in, yelling, "What are you doing? We have to go!"

"She won't move, Ferus!" Barriss shouted back. Her eyes were round and unblinking.

"Then pick her up and go!" the boy yelled, dashing back toward the ship's cockpit. "We don't have time!"

Ahsoka wasn't paying any attention to them, though, because the big Temple door had opened again and Master Garen was coming! There were lots of white-faces behind him, but even that didn't matter. He was a Master, and now that he was here, everything would be all right.

"Go, go!" Master Garen shouted. He was running toward the ship, and he had his lightsaber out behind him, flashing brilliantly back and forth, deflecting laser blasts.

Barriss tried once more to lead her into the ship's hold, but Ahsoka fought her off. She was waiting for Master Garen.

Then there was a strange silence that made the blaster bolts sound even louder than they did on the holos, and Master Garen's lightsaber was flashing again, but something was wrong, because he was falling. Everything slowed down and Ahsoka couldn't understand what was happening. The world was burning and Master Garen was falling.

She felt Barriss grab her roughly by the arm, but her eyes didn't leave Master Garen. He made a little gasping sound, then looked up at her and hissed, "Go!" Something was wrong with his voice. And why wasn't he getting up?

The silence shattered as all of the white-faces opened fire at once. Master Garen made a strange grunting sound, and then he stopped moving.

Barriss had taken a firm grip on her arm and was dragging her towards the ship's hold and yelling at Ferus to go. Ahsoka didn't try to fight her this time. Someone was screaming, and she thought it might be her.

She felt the ship jolt under her as Barriss strapped her into a seat. One of the other younglings was asking where they were going. A lot of them looked like they were trying not to cry. Jedi weren't supposed to cry.

Barriss said they were going to a safe place. She said they would meet the Masters when they got there. She said everything would be all right.

Ahsoka didn't believe her.


	5. First Do No Harm

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** In the aftermath of her first kill, twelve year old Barriss struggles with what it means to be both a healer and a Jedi.

* * *

.10 years before Anabasis.

**First Do No Harm**

_There is a way of telling stories. They tell you it is not like this._

- Shira Erlichman, "How to Tell a Story"

* * *

In the forty-some hours between the conclusion of negotiations and the landing in the Temple docking bay, Barriss has created an endless number of lives for the slim brown-eyed dead boy.

He was desperate: maybe his family was starving, or they needed medicines they couldn't afford. Or no, he'd wanted adventure. Non-Jedi did that sort of thing, didn't they? Master Yoda was always warning the padawans about the dangers of going after adventure and excitement. Barriss pictures the slim brown-eyed dead boy and thinks maybe that is why.

Or the boy's parents had been involved in the rebellion, too. They'd been workers in one of the manufacturing plants, underpaid and desperate, and their son had been caught up in their fervor.

Except that he didn't have parents. Maybe he didn't have anyone at all. He was there because he had nowhere else to be.

He hadn't been angry when he'd come at Barriss. He'd been afraid. He didn't want to be taken in to the authorities. There would be no one to care for his younger brother then, no one to buy his medicines or watch over him when he was feverish.

And so she sits in the ship's tiny passenger hold, staring out the viewport and watching the strange swirls of hyperspace. They're very soothing—meaningless patterns in blue and white that form and dissipate and change nothing. Sometimes she wishes she could be like hyperspace.

Her master is asleep just a few doors down, but Barriss can't sleep. She knows that the young man's brother probably doesn't even exist, that she's invented him like a character in a story, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter as much as the fact that maybe she could have helped him.

Maybe she could have helped his brother, the young man about whom she really knows nothing, except that he is slim, and brown-eyed, and dead. There is a hole burned through his chest, piercing the right lung, and his face is frozen in a permanent, surprised "oh." Her lightsaber is still glowing in her hand, and Master Luminara's hand is resting on her shoulder, but she can't understand anything her master is saying. She replays the scene again and again in her mind, trying to hear the words properly, but she can't hear anything over the image of the brown-eyed dead boy.

They dock at the Temple in the early hours of Coruscant's morning, and her master finds her still sitting beside the viewport. This time Barriss can understand her words, but they still don't seem to mean much.

"Barriss?" Master Luminara says, putting her hand on Barriss' shoulder in the same way she did before. "Have you been here all night?"

"Yes, Master," she replies dutifully, but she doesn't look away from the viewport.

Master Luminara pauses for a moment, and then she pats Barriss' shoulder. "I know it's hard, Padawan," she says. "But you did what you had to do. I'm proud of you."

And now Barriss does look at her master. She is calm and serene as always, her warm eyes filled with a spark of concern. A strange new brown-eyed voice in the back of Barriss' mind suddenly wonders how many people her master has killed.

"I couldn't sleep," she says, in answer to her master's previous question. "I keep seeing his face, and wondering…" She trails off into wordlessness, because she doesn't know what she's wondering, exactly, and she doesn't think there would be words for it if she did.

"I know, Barriss," Master Luminara says very gently. She squeezes Barriss' shoulder again before drawing back. "But dreams pass in time."


	6. The Lesser of Evils

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** Vader rescues Sabé from prison, and she becomes his agent.

* * *

.4 years before Anabasis.

**The Lesser of Evils**

_This thing of darkness I  
Acknowledge mine._

_- The Tempest_, V.i.275-276

* * *

In the beginning there was darkness. Deep, echoless blackness, pressing against her eyelids and thrumming in her skull. The darkness had texture and form and taste, and its touch against her skin was a tangible thing. She sat in the darkness atop something she could not see, but which she nevertheless named a bench. It seemed an arbitrary enough designation for a solid lump of darkness within the larger, more insubstantial dark. Perhaps that was why she liked the name. It reminded her that she had that power, that arbitrary ability to name.

She sat on the bench and told herself stories. Sometimes they were silent, but sometimes she told them aloud. It was one of the earliest exercises she'd learned, a way of keeping a grasp on her sense of self and her sanity. She practiced doing the voices for all of the people in the stories. She tried to make herself sound as much like them as possible, but in the dark her voice blurred together with theirs. She reinvented them all, there in the dark.

She had several favorite stories, and she recited them to herself again and again. The pranks she and Saché had played on Padmé, the birdhouse she'd built for her mother's birthday, her first kiss under the Verran Gate when she was twelve. They were not the sort of stories her captors were interested in, but then, the stories they asked her about were not her favorites. She did not remind herself of serial numbers or code frequencies or the combination to Moff Tarkin's office terminal. She thought she'd probably forgotten many of the details a long time ago. (Even though she knew she hadn't, not really. But it was a nice thought, and so she kept it.)

It seemed a long time ago, but she didn't know how long, and that irritated her. She thought she'd once had a pretty good sense of time. But it was always dark here, always soundless, and the food never came at regular intervals. She hated the dark.

She started telling herself stories about sunlight, about dappled grass and the glint off the falls as they poured past Theed Palace. She reminded herself of sunny days spent in the mountains with her cousins and warm summertime romances at the palace. Once she even composed a love letter, aloud, and addressed it to Rabé, the girl she'd never quite had the courage to admit her attraction to before the war and the end of everything. But soon she realized that she could no longer feel the sunlight on her skin as she described it, could no longer see Rabé's warm, teasing face before her, could no longer tell the difference between her mother's voice of memory and her own vocal imitation. That was when she knew that no one could hold out forever.

They didn't come for her for some time after she had this realization. She didn't know how much time, and that was part of the point, wasn't it? She'd lost her sense of time.

But still she was expecting them, and she was almost disappointed when things didn't follow standard procedure. For one thing, neither Moff Tarkin nor any of his flunkies ever came back for her at all, and there was no word about execution, either. Surely she was more dangerous than that.

So she sat alone in the dark, telling herself stories about sunlight, even if she could no longer imagine it.

* * *

He brought the light with him.

Later, when she remembered it, she would see the irony in it, but at the time all she saw was blinding, unaccountable radiance. She groaned and shrank back against the wall, turning her face away from the light.

He had opened the door, and was standing there with the faint glow of the low-light directional fixtures creating a slight haze at his back. In the scant moments before she turned away, blinded, she caught the impression of a hooded face against the backdrop of dazzling light, and knew who he was.

But he had not been among those who put her here. She didn't think he'd even been involved. This was Tarkin's affair, and she'd been given to understand that the two of them were not exactly friendly.

It didn't matter. He was certainly no more trustworthy than the Moff, and possibly less.

She heard a faint movement of cloth at her back, followed by the swish of the door closing once more, and then everything was cool, soothing, echoless blackness again.

"Do you know your name?" he said, and she was startled to find that his voice did not sound like hers. It had been so long.

"Sabé," she whispered into the speaking dark, as she had so many times before. "My name is Sabé Elinai."

"And do you know who I am?" His voice surrounded her, and she thought perhaps he sounded pleased.

"You are Lord Darth Vader," she breathed to the darkness. "And I suppose you've finally come to kill me."

He laughed. It had been a long time since Sabé had heard any laughter but her own, but she didn't think his was a particularly nice laugh.

"That," he said, "would be a pointless waste of resources. Tarkin is a fool." She thought he sounded amused as he said this.

"Resources?" she choked. It was century-year-minutes since she'd heard another human voice. She thought it was a beautiful word. All his words were.

"I have a business proposal for you," he said, in a formal but condescending tone that even now, after everything, she could still recognize easily enough. "If you are still capable of it, of course." And there was another faint hiss of movement and the swish of the door, and the terrible light streamed in to fill the world with echoes.

She stared wide-eyed, blind against the light, and winced, but did not turn away.

"Get me out," she said, "and we'll see."

* * *

She spent nearly three months in recovery. She knew this because, although her sense of time was slow in returning, the small apartment he'd put her in had an abundance of holonet terminals, and there were always the others to ask.

In her own mind, though, there was the first time, and then the time after time returned. The first time was a whitened blur of healers and tests and readjustment and light, intermixed with the voices of the others, who knew how to ask questions better than the healers. She remembered his voice the most. In the first time, she thought of him only as the beautiful one, because the delicate tattoos on his face and hands reminded her of a work of art, a sculpture she'd seen once in the Royal Museum of Art and Culture long ago. Later, after time returned, she learned that his name was Jothra Pavin, and that she'd called him beautiful to his face.

In the time after time returned, the others told her that she had spent one month and nine days in the first time. They said that she still had far to go, but that what remained, they would help her through. Most of this was training, and she took to it quickly, as she was learning very little that was genuinely new. So she watched the others, and learned what they had to teach her, but she learned them, too.

The others, she learned, were Vader's agents. They had call numbers, but they seemed strangely free with their real names. About two months into her stay in the apartment, she decided that this made a kind of sense. She was to be one of Vader's agents herself, if she passed his test. If she failed… She doubted there would be a security problem in any case.

There were three other agents, and at least one of them was with her at all times. She considered this a compliment of sorts: Vader must have thought her quite useful if he was willing to take away from his people's time in order to have them watch her.

She struggled with the pressing sense of gratitude she felt toward him. She had enough presence of mind to realize that her tendency to view him as her savior was psychological, a reaction to the indefinite extremes of her treatment in confinement. In her most self-aware moments, she realized that he might even have planned it that way. Certainly he would not have objected to this intense loyalty her subconscious seemed determined to feel for him.

Following a hunch, she asked Jothra, during a lull in their tactical training regimen, how he had come to be Vader's agent.

She had considered her options carefully before asking. Her first inclination had been to ask Dinsa, but the Twi'lek woman reminded her too much of herself, with her abrasive attitude and her cold eyes. Iskar, the Clawdite she suspected Vader used for most of his espionage work, stopped by the apartment rarely, and never in the same form. He left her feeling disconcerted, and she spoke with him as little as possible.

But Jothra Pavin was surprisingly easy to talk to. He never mentioned her strange lapse during the first time, but neither did he seem uncomfortable with her. His eyes were warm and open, and although there was much he wouldn't say, she felt somehow certain that he was not given to outright lying. The Mirialan tattoos that traced geometrical shapes across his face and hands marked him out as an empath. She wondered how such a man could deal with Vader on a regular basis.

He merely laughed when she asked the question. "The Boss needs somebody to look out for him every now and then," he said.

She had no idea what he could possibly mean. She wiped a cloth across her brow and sighed in frustration. "But how did you—"

He shrugged, picking up one of the training droids and beginning to reset it for the next routine. Sabé knew that she had impressed him; he was resetting the droid to level seven. "I'd just finished a job for one of the big traders on the Outer Rim. It paid pretty well, but the work wasn't very challenging." He shot her a grin and added, "Vader made a good offer, and I knew I'd never be bored."

Sabé clenched her jaw and tried not to roll her eyes. "Just like that?" she asked drily.

Jothra only grinned wider. "Yes, just like that." And he pressed a series of buttons on the droid's casing and there was no more time for chatter.

She thought about it later, though, and when she still couldn't reach any firm conclusions, she asked Dinsa, too.

"He pays well," the Twi'lek said, stirring absently at her tea. "And maybe more importantly, he treats his people pretty well, too." She looked up then and gave Sabé a wicked grin. "Just as long as you're good at what you do."

* * *

On the last morning of the three months, Sabé woke up to find herself alone in the apartment.

She searched every room, even looked in the closets and under the furniture, though she already knew what she would find. She was alone. She felt the gaping spaces of the place pressing around her like echoless blackness.

It was then that she knew she had a choice. She didn't know what Vader's test would be, or when, and she also didn't know how this lapse in security could have occurred. It was extremely suspicious.

She played the possibilities over in her mind, but there wasn't enough evidence to decide anything conclusively. And in the end, no matter what Vader might be planning, she would be a fool to waste this opportunity. It might be her only chance.

She did one last check of the apartment, searching this time for camera feeds or recording devices, and when she was satisfied she sat at the main computer terminal and set a program to hacking Vader's encryption keys.

It was slow work. His codes were very good, maybe even the best she'd encountered, and her time was further slowed by the necessity of disguising her actions in case anyone should return. Her hack codes were installed as a subroutine within a subroutine within a subroutine, which made for extremely tedious work, but did at least allow for multi-tasking. As the program set itself and went to work, she occupied herself with reading the Coruscant newsfeed and, as an extra precaution against suspicion, with hacking into a relatively unimportant Imperial database and familiarizing herself with the systems and routines used to control the planetary weather. It was a vital enough system that, if she was caught, someone might believe that she'd only been working on it.

Ten hours passed and no one returned to the apartment. Iskar had been gone for several days (so far as she knew, anyway) and was therefore likely on a mission, but she'd seen both Jothra and Dinsa only the night before. It was extremely unlikely that Vader had assigned them both to a mission, and certainly not while she was left alone in the apartment.

He had set her up, that much was obvious. The only question was what he had set her up for.

She had a few ideas. Perhaps he thought that her time in the echoless black had made her a fool, but if so he was wrong. He'd promised a test. She could only assume, if she'd been left alone this long, that she was passing.

She wondered if that would still be the case when he discovered that she'd hacked into his own files. She'd spent a lot of time studying up on Darth Vader in the months since her rescue from the darkness (and there it was again, her tendency to think of him as her rescuer), and she suspected that, if he discovered what she was doing here, the probability that he would kill her was very high. She found, somewhat to her surprise, that this fact mattered less than the challenge of hacking into his files. They were some of the best encryption codes she'd ever encountered. She couldn't simply leave them untouched.

Five more hours passed. She was tired, and hungry, but the program was still running, and it would look suspicious if she left the terminal running by itself. She decided not to think about the fact that it already looked suspicious enough that she had spent over fifteen hours at that terminal.

Another two hours passed, and neither Jothra nor Dinsa returned. Sabé had very nearly fallen asleep at the terminal three times, and finally she had given in and left briefly to make a pot of tea. The cup was half done and cooling fast when the terminal alerted her that there had been a change in tomorrow's scheduled weather patterns. That was the signal.

She set the program to decrypt Vader's files, and with a final glance around her to be certain that she was not in view of any of the cameras, she opened the file.

It contained only one document. Sabé had a very bad feeling about this.

But she'd always known that curiosity was her greatest weakness. She opened the document.

It said, "Well done, Five."

She stared at it, distantly recognizing the pleasure she took in his compliment and wondering if his "well done" meant that he wouldn't kill her after all.

"Impressive," said Vader's voice directly behind her. "Most impressive."

She was too well trained to scream, but she did jump, rising out and away from the chair and spinning around in a crouched, defensive posture. The movement was graceful and thoughtless.

Vader looked amused, and ever so slightly smug.

Sabé was still for several moments, remaining in a crouch and listening to her own harsh breathing. Vader simply watched her. He didn't seem surprised at the way she'd startled, but more importantly he didn't seem disappointed.

"This was your test," she said at last, straightening slowly and watching him through narrowed eyes. "You expected me to decrypt your files."

"I'd have been disappointed if you didn't try," he said with a shrug. His smile was almost kind, and she fought to keep herself from answering with one of her own. He didn't say anything else, though, just watched her. She realized that he was waiting for something, looking for something in her.

She took a deep breath and forced down the skittering urge pooled in the pit of her stomach. "So," she said, "when and where do I start?"

This time Vader's smile was very nearly a grin. It seemed she'd passed another test.

"We'll need to work on your startle response," he said. "Jothra's been lax."

She nodded, and he studied her, once more appraising. There was something almost mischievous in his eyes.

"How would you like another crack at Tarkin's files?" he asked.

Sabé thought of echoless blackness and half-remembered stories of sunlight and the blinding brilliance that Vader had brought her. "I'd like that, Boss," she said.


	7. Pomegranate

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** Padmé makes a decision she may regret. (Or, the infamous how-they-got-together fic.)

* * *

.1 ½ years before Anabasis.

**Pomegranate**

_Say to her, "My dear, my dear,  
It is not so dreadful here."_

- Edna St. Vincent Millay, _Prayer to Persephone_

* * *

Padmé hadn't anticipated the scars, and Vader apparently hadn't expected her to be so startled by them.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, stripped to the waist and gazing up at her with an almost boyish expression that looked very strange on his face. He had just told her his name. That startling piece of information was whirling about in her mind, trying but failing to drown out the persistent voice that demanded to know what she was even doing here, half-dressed and in Darth Vader's bedroom.

She didn't know what had brought her here. It was something in the unacknowledged tension of the last few weeks, something in the look in Vader's eyes after he'd kissed her. It was something lost and young and almost…innocent. She wanted to know what it was.

But this was wrong. She _knew _it was wrong, knew that he was a murderer and the servant of a dictator and the very opposite of everything she believed in. But now she also knew that his name was Anakin, and that she had never seen anyone with so many scars.

They covered most of his torso, chest and back, but it was the ones on his back, the scars she'd glimpsed only very briefly, that had burned themselves into her mind. Long, pale red lines crisscrossing one another over his skin, puckered and crinkled along the edges and ridged where they crossed over one another, as though he had grown and they had not. Old, old scars, the kind that didn't feel anything anymore, but still they stood out red against the paler tan of his skin.

They were knife wounds. Padmé had lived through more than enough battles; she could recognize a weapon by the shape of its scar. A long knife, too, by the look of it. The cuts had been deep, but not killing blows, and not meant to be, either. They traced their way across his back like lines on a map, outlining some distant and dimly imagined place.

The scars reminded her of something she'd seen long ago, just past the edges of her memory. She couldn't place it, though, and it made her unaccountably nervous.

She let out a little gasp of horror before she could stop herself, and that boyishly hopeful look collapsed in on itself, replaced for the barest second by hurt, and then by the cold and guarded expression she was most used to seeing on him.

Padmé bit her lip and wondered why it felt as though she'd lost something.

"You don't like my scars?" he asked, his voice hard but not caustic. That more than anything told her that he'd been genuinely hurt. She hoped that the surprise wasn't evident on her face.

"I… They startled me, that's all," she said lamely. The voice that said she shouldn't even be here was getting stronger by the moment.

Vader cocked his head at her and blinked. "Why?"

"I don't know," she said, looking anywhere but at him. "I suppose… I thought there would be some, but you don't have any facial scars and…" She trailed off and risked another glance at him, at his smooth scarless face and the network of old wounds across his chest and arms and the little of his back she could see from this angle. She could identify some of them: knife scars and the marks left by grazing blaster bolts and even a few puncture wounds. There were also several narrow, diagonal burn marks. She had a horrified feeling that these were lightsaber wounds, and she didn't want to think about how he'd gotten them.

"Of course not," Vader was saying in a tone that was almost patronizing. "I'd be no good for undercover work then. A facial scar is too recognizable."

She wondered idly if that meant that he tended to facial injuries and didn't bother with the rest, but mostly she was still occupied in wondering just what she was doing here. He wasn't just her enemy. If he had been, perhaps this would be justifiable. But he wasn't. She thought of Bail, and Mon, Palo and even Sabé, and all the hundreds of Jedi she'd never met. She didn't have the right to forgive him.

But then this wasn't about forgiveness, was it? And that was the worst part. She knew why she was here, and there was no way to justify it.

Vader looked up at her again. His face was completely closed off as he said, "You should go back to your room, Padmé."

She stiffened. Her nightgown felt thin and awkward against her body, and Vader was still sitting there on the edge of the bed, the dim light catching on his scars. His words sounded like a challenge, and Padmé Naberrie had never been able to refuse a challenge.

"No," she said.

He stood abruptly and stepped forward until there was barely a breath between them and her eyes were level with the worst of the lightsaber burns that crossed his chest. She bit back a startled sound and kept her face carefully blank. Of course he'd done that on purpose.

"You don't want to be here," he said, much more gently than she'd expected. "Go."

She swallowed thickly. The lightsaber burn showed a faint red in the wan light.

"No," she said again, a whisper this time.

He took another step forward, crowding her, and said, in a voice that was much harsher than only a moment before, "_Go_, Padmé."

She didn't allow herself to think about what she did next, but acted on impulse, closing the last bit of space between them and kissing him there. Her lips brushed across the too-smooth skin of the burn scar. His breath stuttered and skittered across the top of her head.

She sighed against his skin and felt the shudder that ran through him. And then she said, "Anakin," and something seemed to snap inside him.

He stepped back from her, breath shallowed and eyes alight, and for just an instant she glimpsed that boyish look again, behind the mask of his control. She watched him, and when he stepped back, she followed.

She watched the line of his throat as he swallowed, watched the curl of his hands into fists at his sides, undulating open and closed. She watched the astonishment in his eyes, the tilt of his head, and knew that he was just as surprised at himself as he was at her. She reached out her hand and touched him, brushed her fingers over the smooth skin of the burn scar, over the place where her lips had been, and watched him shatter.

It was not justification. Many things had changed, but not that. It was not justification, but it was, perhaps, an answer, and more importantly a host of new questions.

He said, "I've never—" in a soft, jagged voice.

She said, "I'll show you," and reached for him again.


	8. Tongues of Men and Angels

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** Palo and Riveth learn a new way of speaking.  
**Notes: **Yes, this is Palo/Riveth slash. Don't like, don't read. Also, this fic follows "Poetry."

* * *

.3 years before Anabasis.

**Tongues of Men and Angels**

_This word is not enough but it will  
have to do. It's a single  
vowel in this metallic  
silence, a mouth that says  
O again and again in wonder  
and pain, a breath, a finger  
grip on a cliffside. You can  
hold on or let go._

- Margaret Atwood, _Variations on the Word Love_

* * *

They created a language together.

There was of course Basic sign language, but Palo had only a rudimentary knowledge at best, and Riveth had never learned. He had never thought he would need to.

So they started with simple things. Basic hand gestures and body language that was familiar from the days of Riveth's speaking. It helped that Palo himself could still speak, and so clarify. When they were truly desperate, sometimes Riveth would write his meaning on a scrap of something for Palo to read.

And over time, as they kept "talking," the gestures became codified. There were nuances to Riveth's nods, sentences in the tilt of his head or the brush of his fingers, words in the shrug and shift of his shoulders.

Riveth held out his hands, touched his chest where the word burned beneath his shirt, and stretched his hands out, palms up, toward Palo. Palo smiled and said, "You're welcome." And then he repeated the gesture. Riveth smiled. His head tilted, left and downward just slightly, in thanks.

Later, when Riveth touched the skin beneath Palo's eyes, his calloused thumb brushing lightly and then moving away to touch his own eyes, Palo didn't have to ask for any clarification. He smiled and said, "Yes," and their mouths met in a kiss that did not require tongues.


	9. There Are Things They Haven't Told You

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** Barriss is assigned to bring an injured Sith Lord back from the brink of death, and faces a question with no real answer.

* * *

.8 months before Anabasis.

**There Are Things They Haven't Told You**

_Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,  
or none that can be finally buried._

- Margaret Atwood, _The Loneliness of the Military Historian_

* * *

In the very earliest stages of her treatment of the Sith Lord, there was little time for analysis. Barriss had been running for almost eight years; the innate compulsion to follow a Master's orders was both unexpected and comforting.

She ran a blood test. This was standard medical procedure, and a corner of her mind could acknowledge that it made her feel a bit more secure, knowing that she was following procedure. At least it was one thing that made sense.

In those first, most uncertain hours, she asked no questions about her patient or about the rightness of the Masters' decision to save his life. She simply did her duty.

But after… After, when he'd been stabilized but was still far from waking, after she'd had a chance to examine him more thoroughly, after she'd made a full catalogue of traumas and wounds and scars (and could guess with near certainty at which ones came from her fallen fellow Jedi), after she'd had time to really analyze the results of the blood test—after, there was plenty of time to question.

He was unconscious and in a coma, and they knew nothing about him. Medical history, reactions, even his age. In the first stages of initial treatment, while she waited to see if his life would hold, they made a search of the Imperial medical files. There were no records for Darth Vader.

His breathing sounded awful even with the assistance of the respirator. Her scanners told her that the damage to his lungs was even worse than it sounded. He was very close to death.

And she was tempted. He had cut down her master, had cut down so _many _of them. And he was so close. She could just let him go, say she'd done what she could. No one would doubt her.

She stared down at his face, half obscured by the respirator. He was too badly injured for bacta; it had been difficult even to move him from the place he'd fallen. (She supposed that had been his quarters, but she still thought of that room as the Masters' conference suite.) His chest rose and fell laboriously, and there was a gurgle of blood beneath the sounds of the respirator. His skin was so pale she could count the veins beneath it.

He needed another injection of branalzine, and the syringe was resting, heavy and weightless, in her hand. She was the only one in the room. It was the first time that had happened, but the Masters were desperately needed elsewhere, and in any case, what harm could an unconscious Sith Lord really do? He was defenseless.

Defenseless…

The needle shook in her hand, and Barriss wondered if there was anything to stop her. There was the Council, perhaps, but she knew that they were almost evenly divided on this, and none of them would be truly upset or even disappointed if it happened naturally. And it would be naturally. She wouldn't even—

But she remembered Amidala: her strange, firm insistence and the way they'd nearly had to sedate her when she refused to leave the Sith's bedside. Something had happened there in the old conference suite, and no matter what the Masters might say, Barriss had a feeling it was something more than a simple case of a Sith apprentice overthrowing his master. Vader had obviously not been ready for that, and he wasn't stupid.

But he had challenged anyway, and now… She looked again at the syringe in her hand, away from Vader and his increasingly labored breathing.

It might even be considered mercy, in a way.

She didn't want to show him mercy, though, and to couch this decision in such terms was only a form of self-delusion. This wasn't about mercy.

She watched his sallow, slack face and wondered how many times he had felt this way. How many Jedi he had stood over like this, how many times he had actually _enjoyed _that power, and what came after. She wondered if he would appreciate the irony that it was a healer who could…

Vader released a breath through the respirator that ended on a gurgle and a wheeze. Barriss turned away from him and stared unseeing at the far wall.

_Go, Barriss_, her master had said. _Go! You must help the younglings._ She'd looked old, and shaken, her headdress hanging at an angle, her left sleeve tattered away. She'd smelled of smoke. Everything had.

And he'd been there. In her memory, he was smaller, wiry and slender and all dark robes and half-hidden eyes. His lightsaber was red, a brighter, darker shade than the fire.

He'd been looking at her. Master Luminara had ignited her lightsaber and stepped between them, pushing Barriss away. _Go go go. The younglings… _But his eyes had been on her, the whole time.

They were blue. When it happened, when her master misjudged his feint and the red blade swept down, Barriss was too far down the hall, and in the rushing that filled her ears all she could think was the younglings. She ran, and kept running, and didn't think about it for years, except for the memory of red and blue.

They were still blue. His eyes. She'd caught a glimpse of them, pried them open in the course of her tests, and they were blue and vacant and dead. Only to be expected for a patient in a coma. She reflected vaguely that they shouldn't have bothered her as much as they did.

Those eyes would look the same, blue and vacant and dead, if he were…

She set aside the syringe, unused, and moved to the screen to check his records. His breathing was increasingly harsh in the background as she pulled up the results of the blood test.

_Species: Human_

_Blood Type: O+_

_Age: 18-22 standard years_

_Midichlorian Count: 20,000+_

The Masters, of course, were concerned about the midichlorian count. It was off the charts, an anomaly, _impossible_. It left even Master Yoda unsettled, and Master Mundi wondering why such a Sith should be kept alive.

Barriss had her own reasons for wondering that, but they were mostly not concerned with the midichlorian count. That was an oddity at best, and at worst simply another reason in her favor.

With a sigh she turned away from his meager records and lifted the syringe again, weighing it carefully in her hand. Behind her, Vader was wheezing. She thought of how different he sounded from the boy in the fire, and of the indecipherable look that passed across Senator Amidala's face when she was told he might live.

And, as she had every day for the past eleven days, she stepped forward and turned toward the sound of his rasping breath. The syringe lowered and depressed silently against his neck. She listened, not once looking at his face, as his breathing slowly evened and deepened, and the chance passed yet again. She listened, and cursed herself for a coward.

* * *

On the thirty-sixth day that she didn't kill him, Darth Vader woke up, and Barriss knew she would have no more chances.

She hoped she had made the right choice.


	10. Beautiful Things

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** A young Palo searches for his medium and his calling.

* * *

.13 years before Anabasis.

**Beautiful Things**

_Beauty and affliction are the only two things that can pierce our hearts._

- Simone Weil

* * *

When Palo first expressed an interest in participating in the Legislative Youth Program, his older sister Sasté had laughed and said he was far too much of a romantic to make it in politics, even on Naboo. At the time he'd simply shrugged it off; Sasté's own time in the Program had taken her to Erebul, and since her return she'd had even less patience for what she called romantic notions.

"But maybe it'll cure you, Palo," she'd said with a teasing smile. "Your poetry really is awful."

They'd both laughed, but privately Palo rather hoped she was right.

But the Legislative Youth Program hadn't cured him of that romantic streak. It had merely tempered it, given it scope and direction. It showed him that words, however beautiful, were often inadequate, and so he sought another medium.

Sasté often joked that at least he had given up the poetry.

When he was still fifteen years old, Palo learned the difference between two types of beauty.

There was a girl named Hané, a year ahead of him in the Legislative Youth Program. She had deep black eyes and small slim hands, and he was more than a little in love with her. He'd just begun to feel confident enough in his skills as an artist that he no longer hid that part of himself from his friends, and Hané had asked him half jokingly to paint her portrait.

He tried. In a technical sense, it wasn't even bad, and Hané seemed genuinely impressed. Little Padmé regarded the portrait with something like awe, and maybe even jealousy. But Palo was disappointed. The painting was good, maybe even beautiful, but it was dead. Hané herself was beautiful, but her portrait was merely a picture. It had no life in it, and certainly nothing to say.

He got a lot of requests from his friends after that, but none of the paintings had that spark. He felt as though he were missing something. Finally, he consulted his art instructor in the program, who recommended that he beginning carrying a sketchbook or a datapad with him and drawing whatever might capture his interest, particularly on their humanitarian missions.

That was how his first real piece of art was born. It was a messy, hurriedly sketched portrait of a man who'd come in with the latest refugee transport. He was ragged and furtive, lounging against a crate in an attempt at casual, a death stick clasped, barely visible, in his left hand.

It was only a sketch, but it was _alive_.

It was then that Palo understood the difference between beauty and beauty. The first kind of beauty was a loveliness of face and form, an appearance that drew the eye and gave it pleasure. It was real, but it possessed a certain transience, dependent on the moment, on emotion and mental state and the eye of the person looking. The second kind was sometimes bound together with the first, but much more difficult to define. Even his art instructor didn't understand, exactly, and Palo didn't try to explain it to anyone else.

The second kind of beauty was no more timeless or interior than the first. Sometimes it wasn't beauty at all. It was a nameless something that cried out to the artist in him, something that wanted to be imitated in paints and light and canvas. At first he thought of it as something that wanted to be captured and preserved, but the paintings that came of that thought quickly taught him that he was wrong. This beauty was _alive_—it couldn't be captured. It only hovered for a moment, just long enough at times to touch upon his brush and lend the paint the ability to speak.

He could never put it into words, and that was part of what convinced him. When he was sixteen, Palo left the Legislative Youth Program and enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art and Culture.


	11. Scheherazade

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.  
**Summary:** Padmé has a thousand stories, and Vader has a thousand scars. Or, Padmé is a sleuth, and Vader is a mystery to be unraveled.

* * *

.1 ½ years before Anabasis.

**Scheherazade**

_To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live  
without mirrors is to live without the self. She is  
living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and  
on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice  
comes through darkness and has no face. This voice  
becomes her mirror._

- Margaret Atwood, _Marrying the Hangman_

_

* * *

_

The first real conversation they'd ever had had been a story.

It had been unplanned, on Padmé's part at least. Vader had been there in the kitchen, just returned from another mysterious, unspoken mission, preparing dinner for himself and casually turning it into a double helping when she mentioned that she was hungry. It was such a startlingly thoughtless action that she wasn't sure how to respond.

There was nothing to talk about. Vader never spoke to her about his missions (and did she really want to know anyway? a traitorous timid part of her wondered). She didn't know if this silence felt awkward to him, but she had been alone for weeks and, stronghold of the enemy or no, Padmé found herself with very little to occupy her time.

Vader's artless action drew one of her own: for the first time in years, she spoke without thinking.

"When I was a child," she began, "my family used to prepare dinner together, and we would tell stories as we worked…"

* * *

He never said much, when she told the stories, but she knew that he enjoyed them. He gave the appearance of half-listening, always with an amused and vaguely condescending air, as though he were doing her a favor. It was, Padmé had to admit, an impressive act, but there was no question that it was an act. She had no power here; he would have no reason to humor her, unless he wanted to.

Padmé smiled to herself, pretending at disinterest and nonchalance, and carefully crafting the ancient story of a dragon who hid his heart in a box, and the valiant queen who discovered it.

* * *

It was surprising, how very little things changed in the wake of…whatever it was between them now. Padmé didn't spend much time thinking about it; it was wrong and she was very well aware of it, but she was so tired of distance.

She still told stories over dinner, but sometimes, later at night, in the dark and the closeness of tangled sheets, he would tell stories of his own. They were stories she'd never heard before, some clearly age-old legends and others, she suspected, thinly disguised personal narratives. They were nearly all from Tatooine.

She catalogued this information, placed it side by side in her mind with the fact that, sometimes, when he was angry or distracted, he would speak a language to himself that sounded like Huttese, but was no dialect she had ever heard before. In a few particularly unguarded moments, he casually mentioned transmitters, masters, and, once, the traditions of slave marriage.

She wondered if perhaps they had something in common, after all.

* * *

Even after she'd grown used to all the other scars, the jagged markings on his back still startled her.

It might have been because she saw them less frequently (he very rarely turned his back to her, or to anyone). Or perhaps because they were so distinctive. She had composed a thousand metaphors for them—they were the lines of a map, they were the topography of a landscape, they were the remnants of ancient and now lost histories, they were unanswered questions—but ultimately all the metaphors fell flat. These scars, that she saw so rarely, were not explicable through the stories she crafted for them. They were brutal.

He didn't turn his back to her often, but when he did she never looked long.

She knew the scars better by touch than by sight. The first time, she'd been almost afraid to touch him there, afraid that the jagged edges and puckered corners would burst, and they'd both be drowning in his unspoken past. It was a ridiculously poetic image, she knew, but he'd only laughed, that strange hard laugh that almost sounded as though it were trying to soften around the edges, and he said, "They bled out a long time ago."

It was a ridiculously poetic answer, and if she had to pick a moment, that might have been when she fell in love with him. If not then, it must have been the first time he kissed the number engraved in her shoulder and asked, idly, if she'd ever met AQ753861.

That was after the fourth time, when he was much more certain of himself and much more comfortable with her.

Even though she was beginning to realize how very little she actually knew about Darth Vader, she still knew better than to ask him directly about the scars. She had learned that long ago, in their casual conversations across countertops: he would not speak to her about his missions, but he was a man who appreciated stories.

And yet she didn't know how, even then, to broach the question. And so she started by asking Sabé.

In retrospect that might have been a mistake. The question tumbled, halting and awkward, from her mouth, and Padmé was intensely aware of the distance between them. This was not the woman she had known, so many years ago in Theed, when they had both been different people.

Sabé favored her with a nearly derisive glance and a raised eyebrow that said very clearly that Padmé would have no business questioning _her_ moral decisions anymore. "I don't know," she said, just a hint of sting in her voice, "I've never seen him shirtless."

Padmé flushed, but did not drop her gaze. They were long past the point of denial, and she could admit it now, that they had both come to the same place. "I thought he might have— Or that maybe on one of your missions—" She let both statements trail off, uncertain of exactly what she'd meant to say and hoping that Sabé might be able to fill in the blanks.

She was surprised, though, when Sabé's face softened slightly, some of the antagonism leaving her eyes. She wondered if they'd reached an unspoken truce, or if this was something else entirely. But all Sabé said was, "No. He isn't really the talkative kind." She looked long and searchingly at Padmé, her face unreadable, and then she shrugged. "I suppose you'll have to find a different way of asking."

* * *

It would have to seem spontaneous, Padmé knew. And he would know the difference; therefore the spontaneity would have to be genuine. She couldn't plan her strategy too much.

In the end, she returned to what she knew about him, and to what had started all of this in the first place.

"Anakin," she said slowly, tracing circles across his chest in the near dark. Her trailing fingers brushed the edges of one of the puncture wounds on his abdomen, and she paused, startled by a sudden thought. "Tell me about this one," she said.

Vader propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her, amusement sparking in his eyes. Padmé smiled a little to herself; amusement was a good sign.

"What?" he asked, that almost-soft laughter dancing on the edges of his voice.

"This scar," she said, tracing the circumference of the mark with her finger. "Tell me the story behind it."

He snorted. His eyes caught and held hers, almost black in the dark, amusement, suspicion, and a hint of desire shining there. She knew he was making no effort to hide those things, and wondered what it meant, that he wanted her to see them.

At last he said, "Why?" The question was quiet, barely a breath, and it hung in the air like smoke.

Padmé smiled. "Why did you ask me about AQ753861?"

Vader's mouth twisted in that peculiar expression which was mostly a smirk, but which Padmé fancied might hold just the faintest hint of tenderness. She was probably deceiving herself, but still she let the thought linger.

He raised a hand and traced over the letters and numbers engraved in her shoulder, the small hairs below his knuckles tickling against the ink-stained scars. Padmé shivered.

"That scar," Vader said softly, his eyes trained on the movement of his hand against the numbers of her tattoo, "was…a parting gift from a Jedi named Ferus Olin. Perhaps you've heard of him?" His eyebrow raised, a match for the challenging curve of his mouth, and he eyed her, waiting.

Padmé fought to keep the horror from her eyes. She knew this about him, that he was a killer, and a Jedi killer specifically. If he saw that he'd upset her, he would think her weak, and she would lose her chance.

She was silent a moment, her hand returning to the scar in question, ghosting over the puckered flesh, but her eyes remained fixed on his. "Yes," she told the Sith. "I've heard of him."

His smile turned soft at the edges, and his eyes returned to her tattoo. "It was two years ago," he murmured, his mouth following his eyes. Padmé released a breath, knowing that she'd passed whatever test he'd set. "On the Outer Rim," he continued. "On Dantooine, where the Jedi had set up their base. Olin was injured and desperate, and he'd lost his lightsaber…"

* * *

It became a tradition of sorts between them, telling the scar stories. Vader had a peculiar sense of fairness, something that Padmé found darkly amusing, and he often insisted on the stories behind her scars, as well.

Padmé had her goal in mind, of course, but she knew she couldn't be too obvious about it. So she chose other scars to ask about, scars that stood out enough that they might have been logical choices on their own, rather than a screen for something else.

When she finally decided to ask about the scars on his back, they had already been playing this game for some months. She kept it casual. He was languid and almost happy, in an uncomplicated way that was extremely rare; she'd seen him this way only twice before. She didn't know what had brought on this mood, exactly, but she wasn't about to waste the opportunity.

Vader was lying at an angle, half on his side and half on his stomach, and the edges of the scars that marked his back stood out hard and dark in the dim light. Padmé decided this was a plausible enough reason. She reached out hesitantly, a single fingertip tracing the nearest of the marks that ran across his shoulder blade. "Tell me about these," she whispered.

Vader hissed and jerked sharply away, his face set and cold. He loomed over her, wordless, and Padmé had the fleeting thought that this must be what so many had seen, just before they died. She couldn't see his back anymore.

They stayed like that, in breathless silence, for an interminable period, while Vader regarded her with hard, unblinking eyes and Padmé wondered if she was going to die. Then, with a suddenness that made Padmé yelp in surprise and yes, fear, Vader lunged just past her and retrieved his shirt. He didn't turn his back to put it on.

Finally his eyes left her, and he said, "No," in a voice without any inflection. Then he moved to the door and was gone.

* * *

She didn't see him again for just over a week. When he returned, there was a new scar on his right arm, just above the elbow. She met his eyes without flinching, and she said, "Tell me about this one."

He did.

She considered the story, the death of a Jedi she had never met, and the hardness of Vader's eyes that last time, the feel of the unseen scars under her hand only moments ago. She wondered which of them had won this round.


	12. No

**Disclaimer:** Star Wars is not mine.**  
Notes: **Follows "There Are Things They Haven't Told You."**  
Summary:** This is how Barriss went from treating an unconscious Vader and struggling with her desire to kill him to the conflicted, almost-friendship she has with Anakin in Anabasis.

* * *

.4 months before Anabasis.

**No**

_This is a strange new kind of war where you learn__  
__just as much as you are able to believe._

- Ernest Hemingway

* * *

One of the first things Barriss learned, as a Jedi and as a healer, was that she must never become attached. Attachment to a patient (to another being) led to a lack of clarity and impaired judgment.

Barriss understood this as a healer first, and from there it was only a small matter to apply it to her life as a Jedi.

She learned very quickly that attachment, _attaching emotions_, could be negative as well as positive. Anger, hatred, pain—these were only another way of becoming attached. They could tie her to the very thing she hated.

When Vader woke at last, all wheezing breath and atrophied muscles, but _alive _(in spite of as much as because of her), she found the old question staring up at her with a monster's blue eyes.

_Detachment_, she thought. And then, when that wasn't enough, _Dissociate_.

(She had heard Senator Amidala call him "Anakin.")

She remembered, very clearly, the first thing she'd said to him. It was the same thing she said to all her patients, when she knew that they would live.

"Don't worry, Anakin. You're going to be all right."

* * *

A good healer knows, perhaps before all else, how to make her patient feel comfortable. Barriss was a very good healer.

When she visited Vader (Anakin), she never wore her lightsaber. She talked about the Jedi in the third person. Sometimes, she brought him tea. When she could, she told him exactly what each dosage was and why she was administering it to him. She called him "Anakin." She didn't ask questions.

She could see he was amused by her efforts. He had mastered the techniques of manipulation and she saw, in his eyes, how paltry her attempts seemed in comparison. Of course he could see right through her. He knew what she was doing.

But he thanked her for the tea all the same. He treated her civilly, sometimes almost warmly, in marked contrast to his treatment of the other Jedi. He called her "Doc." At times he even answered the questions she didn't ask.

She thought, once, in a particularly unguarded moment over tea, that they might have been friends, if not for the trail of bodies that stretched between them.

* * *

Barriss was not a mind healer, although she had had some training in that discipline. Enough, at least, to recognize symptoms (if not always to diagnose them).

Anakin (Vader) talked in his sleep, particularly in the fever-dreams of drugged sleep. She was usually the one who induced those dreams, and so she heard them all.

He lay perfectly still on the pallet in his cell (or, on the worst days, in her med bay). He didn't thrash or twitch. But he did scream. Sometimes, there were words—_master yes no why remember master mother no Padmé no no_—and sometimes just the screams.

Once, Barriss tried to help him. She was not a mind healer, but she was all he had (all the Temple had, now, and all because _he_—) and she tried anyway.

She touched his mind, and was devoured.

(_She was dark, tangled jungle and the smell of rot and blood and the heft of steel and retching and the buzz of flies and blood and —_)

He jerked awake with a hiss, hand darting out and catching at her like a shackle before tossing her arm away with such violence that she went flying after it, caught in force and momentum and trajectory.

"If you touch me," he said, "I'll kill you." He was cold and imperious and matter-of-fact (_and terrified_, said something within her, something that could still smell the rot of the jungle and the sting of blood).

Barriss righted herself, cleared herself of gravity, and stepped toward him, unafraid.

"I think, in another life, we might have been friends," she said. The words were choked, dry and painful. (It was so much easier than saying, _I might have been you_.)


End file.
